“Understanding the History and Practice of Halloween”
Text: II Corinthians 6:11-18; Ephesians 5:3-16
Introduction: Since the eighth century Christians have celebrated All Saints’ Day on November 1 to celebrate the known and unknown Christian Saints. Saints are not just those whom the Church has canonized, but all members of that "cloud of witnesses" who proclaim Jesus as Lord - including you and me!
Almost as old as the celebration of All Saints’ Day is the tradition associated with All Hallow’s Eve. ("Hallows" mean "saints," both mean "holy ones." As in "Hallowed be thy name.") So, Halloween means "the evening before All Holy Ones’ Day." Today we call that festival Halloween and we have many secular ways of recognizing it.
People of many races and cultures have remembered their dead and have had superstitions about death itself. Christians remembered death itself on All Hallow’s Eve and celebrated Christ’s victory over death. During the Middle Ages, Christians would gather in Churches for worship and they would remember the saints’ victories over evil.
Thus, the festivities on All Hallow’s Eve was the Christian’s way of laughing at death and evil, something we can do in certain hope of Christ’s victory over the powers of darkness. The opportunity for the Christian Church lies in how we treat the holiday “Halloween” as an evil celebration or glorification or a chance for us to witness of the power of Christ over death and that we offer hope to all who believe in Christ that there is life beyond the grave.
Although we cannot celebrate Halloween with it’s many pagan and overt occultic overtones, we can celebrate the love of Christ for all people and His desire for them to know and experience His victory over death, and once again we can restore our celebration of this day as a renewal of our faith in the hope of eternal life.
I. The History of Halloween
A. The Early Christian Origin of Halloween or All Saints Day
1. In the early years of Christianity, when Rome persecuted Christians, so many martyrs died for the faith that the Church set aside special days to honor them.
2. In 607 Emperor Phocas presented to the Pope the beautiful Pantheon temple in Rome. Originally built in 27 BC by Agrippa in honor of Augustus’ victory at Actium and dedicated to Jupiter and the planetary divinities, the Pantheon was one of the few remaining old heathen temples.
3. Pope Boniface IV quickly removed the statues of Jupiter and the pagan gods and consecrated the Pantheon to "all saints" who had died from Roman persecutions in the first three hundred years after Christ.
4. During the dedication on May 13 in the year 609 or 610, a procession of twenty-eight carriages brought the bones of martyrs from the various cemeteries to the church.
5. In following years, a festival of All Hallows or All Saints Day honoring all martyrs spread throughout the western part of the Roman Empire.
6. In the eighth century Pope Gregory II moved the church festival of All Saints to November 1st.
7. The move to November 1st in part offered a substitute for the popular pagan celebration of the Celtic New Year, which honored both the Sun god and Samhain, Lord of the Dead.
8. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) moved to restrict such pagan practices and told the people that "They are no longer to sacrifice beasts to the Devil, but they may kill them for food to the praise of God, and give thanks to the giver of all gifts for His bounty."
9. Many, however, held on to pagan beliefs along with Christianity. Sometimes these ancient pagan gods were transformed into Christian saints, angels, and heroes. Scriptures were often allegorized by these pseudo (false) Christians to allow for many of these beliefs.
10. Even into the eleventh century, many pagan beliefs were accepted by Christians--beliefs such as the fear of Fate, the use of medicinal herbs with incantations, sacrifices at springs and crossroads to the spirits of the place (still observable in Mexico, for example), and the night flight or Wild Ride of the spirits, led by Diana.
11. The devil became absorbed into the magical world of fairies, goblins, dwarfs and imps. Demons were said to appear in animal forms. Such beliefs, of course, diverged markedly from the Scriptural account of the devil and his demons as cosmic personalities conquered by Christ on the cross.
12. In the tenth century, Abbot Odilo of Cluny began celebrating the November 2nd following "All Saints’ Day" as "All Souls’ Day" to honor not just the martyrs, but all Christians who had died. People prayed for the dead, and many other superstitions continued.
13. Food was offered to the dead, and it was often believed that on these two festivals souls in purgatory would take the form of witches, toads or demons and haunt people who wronged them during their lifetimes.
10. Though the church was able to transform the pagan temples into Christian facilities, it never fully eradicated pagan beliefs.
11. In the Middle Ages, witchcraft and the worship of Satan continued to find followers, even in some places of "Christian" Europe.
12. The Roman Catholic Church held one of the largest collections of supposed relics outside of Rome. Pieces of bones from saints, locks of hairs from martyrs, a piece of the true cross, a twig from Moses’ burning bush, bread from the Last Supper, a veil sprinkled with the blood of Christ -- all were venerated and held in holy awe.
13. These relics were kept in special vaults, ornamented with gold, silver, and precious stones. They were exhibited on All Saints Day. By 1518, 17,443 pieces were on display in twelve aisles!
14. The church taught that paying the special fee for indulging yourself in viewing the relics would shorten a soul’s stay in purgatory by 1,902,202 years and 270 days! This was one teaching Luther challenged in his 95 theses.
15. On Halloween, the day before All Saints Day when the relics would be specially exhibited, Luther nailed his theses on the church door, challenging scholars to debate the virtue of indulgences, the church’s teaching that by certain works a person could hasten his entrance into heaven.
16. Luther publicly professed the free and gratuitous remission of sin, not by relics, papal pardons, or indulgences, but by faith in Jesus Christ. This belief is still held today among the protestant, evangelical part of the body of Christ.
17. All Souls’ Day, observed on November 2, is celebrated with masses and festivities in honor of the dead.
a. The living pray on behalf of Christians who are in purgatory, the state in the afterlife where souls are supposedly purified before proceeding to heaven.
b. Souls in purgatory, who are members of the church just like living Christians, must suffer so that they can be purged of their sins. Through prayer and good works, living members of the church may help their departed friends and family.
c. Purgatory is not a belief that is held in the protestant evangelical church because it deprives Christ of His power to deal and reckon all sin dead in the life of the believer.
18. After its introduction, this holiday did satisfy many Catholics’ interest in death and the supernatural. But the unchristian idea of wandering spirits persisted in some areas, as did the festivity atmosphere of Samhain.
19. The Spirit of compromise with evil among the Catholic leadership led them to concede that they could not completely get rid of the supernatural elements of the celebrations, therefore the Catholic church began characterizing the spirits as evil forces associated with the devil.
B. History of the Roman Empire Holiday called “Pomona Day”
1. During the first century the Romans invaded Britain. By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. They brought with them many of their festivals and customs.
2. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.
3. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead.
4. One of these was the festival know as Pomona Day, named for their goddess of fruits and gardens. It was also celebrated around the 1st of November.
5. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.
C. History of the Celtic Samhain (sow-en) Festival
1. The Celts lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France.
2. Most of the traditions of Halloween date back to Samhain (sow-en), the ancient Celtic New Year. Samhain, which translates to "end of summer," occurred around the end of October, when the weather started to get cold. At its heart, Samhain was an observance of all the important things that were happening during this change of seasons. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred.
3. The Celts recorded their history orally -- they did not write anything down, but passed on beliefs and stories from person to person. For this reason, historians often disagree about the Celts’ practices and beliefs. So nobody is really sure what the Samhain festival was like, but there are a number of accounts that provide interesting explanations of modern day Halloween practices.
4. The Celtic people, who came together as a society around 800 B.C., kept sheep and cattle. When the weather got colder, the shepherds brought their animals down from the hills to closer pastures. This shift changed daily life significantly. In the winter months, everybody stayed inside or close to home, working on handcrafts and spending time together. Samhain also marked the final harvest of the year, an event commemorated by festivals in many cultures.
5. The Celts celebrated their New Year on November 1st. It was celebrated every year with a festival and marked the end of the "season of the sun" and the beginning of "the season of darkness and cold."
6. Celtic tradition held that turning points, times when things change from one state to another, had magical properties. Samhain marked the biggest turning point of the year -- a change in the weather as well as a shift in everybody’s lives. The Celts believed this magical time opened up a sort of connection to the dead. Those souls that had passed through the ultimate turning point, the shift from life to death. They believed the world of the living was closest to the world of the dead at the time of Samhain, and that the spirits of the dead traveled again among the living.
7. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. A lot of the activities of the Samhain festival were connected to this belief, and many of those practices evolved into modern day Halloween traditions.
8. The Celts worshipped nature and had many gods, with the sun god as their favorite. It was this Celtic deity who commanded their work and their rest times, and who made the earth beautiful and the crops grow.
9. The Celts believed that, the Samhain (Sow-en) Festival was to be celebrated after the crops were all harvested and stored for the long winter the cooking fires in the homes would be extinguished. The Druids, the Celtic priests, would meet in the hilltop in the dark oak forest (oak trees were considered sacred). The Druids would light bon fires and offer sacrifices of crops and animals. As they danced around the fires, the season of the sun passed and the season of darkness would begin. On the night of October 31, as they celebrated Samhain, it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops.
10. The Celts believed at the New Year celebration of Samhain, the ghosts of the dead thronged about the houses of the living, they were greeted with tables loaded with food. The ancient celts feared the time after nightfall on this day because they believed that evil spirits were allowed to roam the earth. In order to appease these wandering spirits, the Celtic priests held fire rites (bon fires) in which they burned sacrifices which may have included human sacrifices, made charms, and cast spells.
11. Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
12. The Samhain (pronounced "sow-en")festival started on October 31st and would last for 3 days. Many people would parade in costumes made from the skins and heads of their animals. This festival would become the first Halloween.
13. After hundreds of years of Roman rule the customs of the Celtic’s Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”) festival and the Roman Pomona Day mixed becoming one major fall holiday.
14. After feasting, masked and costumed villagers, representing the souls of the dead, paraded to the outskirts of the town leading the ghosts away. Horses, sacred to the Sun god, were often sacrificed, and there are some records of human sacrifice during the festival.
15. When the morning arrived the Druids would give an ember from their fires to each family who would then take them home to start new cooking fires. These fires would keep the homes warm and free from evil spirits. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
16. By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday.
II. The Practices of Halloween
A. Trick or Treating
1. In medieval times, one popular All Souls’ Day practice was to make “soul cakes,” simple bread desserts with a currant topping. In a custom called “souling,” children would go door to door begging for the cakes, much like modern trick or treators. For every cake a child collected, he or she would have to say a prayer for the dead relatives of the person who gave the cake. These prayers were believed to help the relatives find their way out of purgatory and into heaven. The children sang a song along the lines of the modern “Trick or Treat, trick or treat, give me something good to eat.” One version went like this:
A soul cake!
A soul cake!
Have mercy on all Christian souls, for
A soul cake!
2. Druid/Celtic superstition held that souls of the dead in the world of darkness were hungry on the festal day, and the souls had to be appeased or else risk the tricks and curses of the Samhain.
B. Jack O’Laterns
1. Druid/Celtic priests instructed followers to extinguish their fires and light and make sacrifices to Samhain, the Lord of Death. They gathered around a fire of sacrifice – thought to be a sacred fire and took fire from that to rekindle their own hearths. A vegetable was carved out and used to carry the fire home.
2. A strange tale has been discovered among Irish children who would carve large rutabagas, turnips or potatoes and place candles inside of them. The legend goes that a drunken man named Jack tricked the Devil into climbing into a apple tree to get some fruit, then carved a sign of the cross into the trunk of the tree to prevent the Devil from coming down. Jack made the Devil swear he would never come after his soul. But, when Jack died, he wasn’t good enough to go to heaven, and the Devil wouldn’t take him to hell, so Jack was left to wander about. The Devil had thrown Jack a coal, and Jack put it in a turnip he had to help light his way as he searched for a place to rest.
C. Bobbing for Apples
1. All Hallows’ Eve has long been a time to look into the future, and traditional festivities included several divination rituals. These come mostly from folk traditions from the British Isles, and many have their roots in the ancient Samhain festivities.
2. A lot of marriage divinations had to do with apples. In Celtic tradition, the fruit was associated with female deities who controlled the ways of love. This may have something to do with the inner structure of apples. When you slice an apple in two, you can see a pentagram shape (a star with five points) on each half, around the core. The pentagram was an important shape for the ancient Celtics, and many other cultures. Among other things, it was a Goddess symbol.
3. One of the most popular divinations was for young unmarried people to try to bite into an apple floating in water or hanging from a string. This is something like the bouquet toss that still plays a part in wedding receptions -- the first person to bite into the apple would be the next one to marry.
4. In another tradition, a young woman would light a candle and peel an apple in front of a mirror. While she was peeling the apple, her future husband would supposedly appear in place of her reflection. Peeling an apple was also a way to predict your life expectancy. If you could cut off one long peel, you would live to an old age. If you only cut a small piece of peel, you would die young.
III. The modern day observance of Halloween
A. American traditions
1. During the first two hundred years of history in America, Halloween was observed, many of the protestant settlers rejected the holiday along with other feasts on the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. With introduction of a large Irish presence during the 1840’s, the holiday became more popular. Many of the old Celtic beliefs and practices were perpetuated in its celebration. Now in the twenty first century, Halloween has become an important holiday to the growing number of believers in Satanism and practitioners of the occult.
2. The Sweet Tooth
Trick-or-treaters rake in a lot of candy every October 31. In fact, according to the National Confectioners Association, Halloween is the number-one holiday for candy sales, beating out Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s Day. The NCA predicts Halloween candy sales to reach $2 billion in 2003 in the United States alone! Typically, more than 85 percent of U.S. households hand out candy Halloween night.
3. Tales of Terror
a. Undue focus on dark themes and graphic violence in movies and TV programs is something that Christians should constantly try their own spirits to examine whether or not they are giving unnecessary and unhealthy attention to ideas, theology, and philosophy that is counter to the Biblical and Christian teaching found in the Bible.
b. Although I do not believe that it is possible to completely cut off all influence of the world we live in, we can certainly limit our exposure to it. We are charged with being salt in a bland world, light in the midst of darkness, a witness of Christ in a world tainted with satanic powers and authorities. Let us remember our responsibility to show the world Christ in our behavior and conduct without being ostriches or moles that hide from reality. Each Christian should pray and ask God to show them a balance in their Christian walk and discern what they according to Scripture can and cannot allow themselves to view and bring into their Christian life. The following Scriptural references should light the way on our search for truth in a world of confusion about darkness and evil.
Romans 13:14; Philippians 4:8; Romans 6:13; I Corinthians 10:31, 32; II Corinthians 6:17; I Thessalonians 5:21, 22; I John 2:15-17
c. Christians should also remember we have responsibility to weaker Christians who may have been exposed to these unfruitful works of darkness and may have not understand our fascination with them and further may not be strong enough to refrain from reassociating themselves with these things. These Scriptural references should also help in this endeavor:
Matthew 22:39; Romans 12:9-21; 13:10; Philippians 2:3-5; Romans 14:13-21; I Corinthians 8:9-13; II Corinthians 5:16; Romans 14:2,3; I Corinthians 8:8; Ephesians 4:2; Colossians 3:13; I Timothy 4:1-5.
B. The Modern Halloween Controversy
1. Since the 1800’s when Irish and Scottish immigrants brought their Halloween festivities to North America, the holiday has evolved considerably. The celebration’s connection with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day has mostly fallen by the wayside, and a number of new secular traditions have developed.
2. For children, dressing up and trick or treating door to door is still the main event. Most households in the United States and Canada participate, and those who don’t run the risk of petty vandalism.
3. Many Samhain traditions are being preserved in the same spirit of revelry in the face of frightening thoughts of death and the supernatural.
4. Americans have added scary movies, community haunted houses, ghost stories and ouija boards to the celebration.
5. The holiday is only second to Christmas in total revenue dollars for retailers.
6. Wiccans, Witches, Druids and Satanists celebrate Halloween as a special day in their calendar where some even sacrifice animals and perform gruesome rituals.
7. Many of these Wiccan and Witches believe they are being misrepresented because their religion according to them is based on a connection to nature and the universe. Funny how close this seems to be to the early Celtic and Druid beliefs explained earlier in this teaching.
C. Hell House?
1. Many Christian groups and churches have chosen to use Halloween to reach people focused on an already evil theme and get them thinking about eternity and how life after death is a real and serious subject that must be addressed in this life.
2. Other Christians seem to think that this too is an over emphasis on the Satanic and should be avoided.
3. Let’s pray that God leads all who endeavor to use these methods to use them wisely and carefully representing both God and Satan in a purely Biblical and Christian way.
IV. The Christian response to Halloween and it’s celebration
A. As far as true Christians are concerned this mixing of truth and error was a serious compromise with evil and therefore was wrong. Mixing truth with error or evil is condemned and discouraged in the following passages of Scripture –
Romans 13:12, 13 “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.”
2 Corinthians 6:14 – 2 Corinthians 7:1 “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
Ephesians 5:11-13 “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: For whatsoever doth make manifest is light.”
1 Thessalonians 5:21, 22 “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.”
I Timothy 1:4 “Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.”
I Timothy 4:1,2 “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron….”
2 Timothy 2:23 “But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.”
Conclusion: Human cultures throughout history have been fascinated with death and the supernatural. Our curiosity with these for the child of God is an opportunity to offer hope to those sincerely searching for genuine, real and credible answers. I pray that the Christian community will respond to outcry for help with thoughtful and meaningful dialogue with the uninformed and the eternally lost of our day with answers that give hope and meaning to life, death and the supernatural. Christians should avoid the very appearance of evil and abstain from anything that is questionable as it relates to the kingdom of darkness. Christians must not be charged with mixing light with darkness. Otherwise we will loose our ability to influence and turn the darkness to light.
